Pedro Sánchez misses no opportunity, he always runs where he smells opportunity. This week Leo XIV will parade through Spain and the president has decided to accompany him to the Canary Islands, a territory where many who come looking for work arrive, to directly address the issue of immigrant regulation, which the Pope supports, while the Spanish right (with Vox setting the pace) has made the criminalization of immigration one of the recurring themes of its attacks on the government.
And yet, there are many questions about the enormous fanfare accompanying this visit. It is true that this pope has started off on the right foot, partly because his American status gives him a good understanding of the Empire from the inside – and of the risks that American society, and all of us with it, runs. And he has positioned himself as an anti-Trump voice, at a time when the president's delusions have made him a global threat and have seriously weakened the image of the United States.
But the mass turnout expected from this visit, fostered from above by speculating with the pontiff's sacred aura, cannot make us forget the reality in its various forms: that the weight of the Catholic Church in Catalonia (and also in Spain as a whole) has been declining for decades and that the number of practitioners is plummeting, at the same time as agnosticism is spreading, but also other beliefs. It is enough to peek into some churches in Barcelona on a Sunday morning to see the reality.
There are problems that defy the most basic respect between humans, such as pedophilia, which enjoys practical impunity in the Spanish Church (71% of the population believes this in a recent survey). El País points out seven cardinals and 61 Spanish bishops who protect the guilty by refusing to face reality. A double standard that is nothing to be proud of. Wanting to artificially maintain national Catholicism is an unsustainable corporate vice. And even more so when agnosticism is growing in Spain and Catholicism is far from being the only belief, with the presence of other religions, starting with Islam on the rise.
Catholics have every right to bring the Pope and give him the maximum possible projection. What is more difficult to understand is that public authorities kneel and bow before his authority, which further fuels the old fantasy of eternal Catholic Spain. Welcome, Leo XIV, without losing sight of the country and the world.
